EPTThe Warhound: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=345180
The Mothership Core: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=344435
This time around I’m going to be focusing on the Oracle.
Oracle – Light Mechanical
Requires Stargate
Minerals: 150
Gas: 200
Supply: 3
Build Time: 60
Health: 80
Shields: 20
Speed: 3.75
Special Ability – Preordain (75 Energy):
Gain vision and detection around a building in a range of ~12 for 2 minutes.
Special Ability – Entomb (75 Energy):
Creates an energy barrier around mineral patches for 45 seconds. These barriers can be destroyed with attacks and have 75 HP. Barriers have no innate armor/shield armor and do not benefit from upgrades.
Special Ability – Cloaking Field (100 Energy):
Cloaks all units and buildings within ~7 range of the Oracle for 60 seconds. Works like Arbiter cloak from BW. 2 Oracles cannot cloak each other.
This unit is clearly a spellcasting unit, and therefore, the Mothership Core’s Energize ability should be referenced (not that we know much about it) when considering its usefulness. The most notable application of this ability is when the Oracle initially is created, it could potentially use two 75 energy abilities, with some energy left over – but Energize could be used for prolonged harassment or scouting as well.
Unit Stats
Unlike nearly all protoss units, the Oracle has very little health, which could make it’s usage challenging if queens or marines are looking for it early on. By comparison, the banshee has 140 health, and the mutalisk has 120, despite costing half the gas (and in the mutalisk’s case, less supply and minerals). To compensate, rather than the traditional method of harassment, the Oracle uses spells, which it can fire and retreat, without needing to remain in an area for any length of time. This makes it almost like a very fast raven (without the added health or ability to do damage).
I’m not surprised at the long build time (and if you want one early, you can get it in 40 seconds anyway with CB), but it is odd to me that it takes 3 supply.
Entomb
I’ve read some people don’t like entomb for its ease of use. Indeed, it does look easy to use. My primary concern is actually related not to how it’s used mechanically, but how it’s used strategically. People are interested in harassment for two purposes:
1. To force any hard pushes or timing attacks to either be all-ins, or to force some amount of units home to defend.
2. To kill a marginal number of workers at a defended base, and weaken future returns going into the mid or late game.
Entomb doesn’t really do either of those. If you attack, and there’s an oracle back at your base entombing your minerals, your workers can attack them, and no long term economy is lost (though a bit of short term economy is). And entomb does detract a bit from short term economy – but does little to inhibit the opponents workforce.
Let’s do a bit of math. An SCV does 3.3 dps. If the opponent has 16 workers per base, that means each shield will stay up for about 12 seconds when attacked by two workers (we’ll say 14, assuming a slight lag and some travel time). 16 workers harvest 672 minerals/minute (from the TL wiki), and therefore, 14 seconds of lost time is 157 minerals. Put 4 marines in there, and each one likely won’t last more than 8-9 seconds, or 90-100 minerals lost. For cost, this means that a single Oracle must use entomb 2-3 times (depending on how you weight the gas cost) successfully in order to get its’ return on what a protoss player spends to get the unit (Or, it can entomb once and force a scan, but let’s focus on entomb for now).
Entomb is a weird form of harassment because, while other forms of harassment remove workers and thereby inhibits the rate of resource acquisition, Entomb just takes away a set number of minerals – something like comparing chrono boosting probes to MULEs. You take away minerals, but you don’t actually harm the other players potential to get minerals in the future.
I do worry, depending on what version of Energize goes live, that this will be able to be used too often.
Preordain
I love this spell for a few reasons.
First, it’s vision the enemy can’t take away. Sure, it has limitations – but like scans, you get to see what’s there and nothing – short of trapping the Oracle and killing it before it gets there, or floating a building targeted by Preordain – can stop the enemy from removing that vision.
Second, the length of time it’s active is nice and long. Unlike scan, Preordain is unable to target areas where the entire army can be seen, so one of scan’s most popular uses – scouting enemy composition and positioning – is essentially disabled. The tradeoff for losing this function is the ability to see the building for two solid minutes – which gives a lot of insight into composition anyway, and allows for the potential for Tempest harassment/sniping (assuming anyone uses the Tempest).
Third, the detection attached makes the Oracle a must for any early-game stargate play. No more with PvX stargate builds necessarily need to be followed by a robo to account for the lack of detection (at least, I believe currently the spell can be used around buildings for detection at home) to deflect banshee or DT harassment.
Cloaking Field
I think this is going to be the biggest question mark in terms of new abilities for the Oracle. Previously, the unit given the arbiter’s cloaking ability was the Mothership – which was big, slow, high tech and unwieldy. The Oracle, on the other hand, is fast, fragile and lower tech. It’s fragility will likely lead to the same outcome the Mothership saw in large blob-type fights. It will get targeted down first and then the rest of the combat will occur. It may be able to avoid death long enough for the cloaking field to swing the advantage, as it is a faster unit. But more likely than not, Vikings and/or corruptors will either kill it or force it away from the army.
But what about using cloaking field for harassment? A pack of cloaked phoenixes (especially with the upgraded range) can deal well with any air superiority units (as well as sniping overlords), and they’re fast enough to be able to run from ground to air units. Cloaked Blink Stalker pushes also might be particularly effective in early game PvZ or PvT. Cloaked Void Rays can be used like more expensive banshees. Cloaked speed prism harass may also be found effective (speed prisms with cloaked colossi seem an interesting thing to fiddle with).
What about using cloak in early game pushes? Particularly, in PvZ it seems like if you went for a very early timing with zealots and an Oracle (with a void to follow-up), you’d arrive really early. And in PvT it seems like early entomb harassment into an early cloaked stalker push could be interesting (stalkers to shoot marines, the Oracle to shield stalkers from marauder fire – both stalkers and Oracles being fast enough to kite marines).
Overall
Just at a glance, the Oracle looks like a unit protoss needs. It’s another spellcaster (amplifying the reason Energize is useful). It’s a fragile, quick unit used for harassment/scouting/detection from the stargate in the early game and potentially tricky strategic maneuvers in the late game. It doesn’t make the deathball much stronger (a little less than a Void Ray in cost to add cloaking ability to a 100 health unit), and the only way it’s even useful in combat is if it can be microed away from damage long enough to justify its cost. It’s not the kind of unit a person could mass, but still, I’ll plan on getting one or two or three in any army I feel I can fit a stargate into – something like the phoenix where it’s incredibly useful, but its usefulness is mostly outside of deathball combat.
In some ways, its early game energy feels a lot like a Orbital Command. You can use its energy for resource removal (compared to resource acquisition on the Orbital) or for undeniable scouting – provided you can get in and get out of the enemy’s base. I do worry, though, that an energized Orbital might not be what the game needs. It’s lategame energy should feels more like a medevac, lending itself to stealthy harassment runs, but being a fragile unit that needs to be kept alive.
I hope preordain and cloaking field don’t get messed with too much – though I suspect early cloak pushes may get cloaking field moved to the fleet beacon.
